H&F Council Says Tax to Be Frozen in Year Ahead
Freeze down to 'new ways of setting budgets and achieving smarter savings'
Hammersmith & Fulham Council has announced it is proposing to freeze council tax for the year ahead.
This means tax levels will stay the same as last year, for instance the council says the charge for a Band D property remains at £727.81. However, the total bills will include an extra levy for the Greater London Authority which has yet to be set.
The council says
in freezing the tax, it has rejected the chancellor of the exchequer's proposal that councils should increase council tax by 2% this year, and government projections for H&F’s finances included this increase.
Council Leader, Cllr Stephen Cowan says it has has introduced new and radical ways of setting budgets and achieving smarter savings.
" This has enabled us to defend Charing Cross Hospital, freeze council tax, pay for record numbers of police on local streets and protect frontline services such as refuse collection and street cleaning," he says.
" Many of our residents are already struggling to make ends meet. Austerity is a very real thing for them, especially for our older and disabled residents – the very people who would have been hit hardest by council tax rises.
" In H&F we’ve abolished home care charges. We’re continuing to cover the cost of the Independent Living Allowance. And we’ve cut all sorts of other fees and charges to our residents.
" We’ve done that to ease the cost of living for people in H&F and we’re not going to undo all that good work just because the chancellor suggests it."
The council’s government grant has been cut by £66million since 2010 and it has to make another £15million of savings this year.
Cllr Cowan says: " Eye-watering levels of cuts in our government grant have meant we have had to look elsewhere for the funds we need to keep children safe from abuse, to look after vulnerable residents and to keep the streets clean.
" We’ve had some major successes in re-negotiating planning deals with developers. That’s given us an extra £51million with considerably more in the pipeline and, while the majority of this will go towards building new affordable homes, these funds will also be used to provide physical and social infrastructure and environmental improvements and thereby releases other funding to protect services."
The council says that last year, it was the only council in London to cut council tax and
bills in H&F are the third lowest in the country, despite the borough having the third highest property prices.
The proposed net expenditure budget for H&F for 16/17 is £153.5million.
January 19, 2016
